Starts tonight.

The four tribes

OLDER MEN
Bruce Kanegai, 58, art teacher
Dan Barry, 52, astronaut
Terry Deitz, 46, airline pilot
Shane Powers, 35, marketeer

YOUNGER MEN
Bobby Mason, 32, attorney
Aras Baskauskas, 24, yoga instructor
Austin Carty, 24, model/novelist
Nick Stanbury, 24, sales exec

OLDER WOMEN
Ruth Marie Milliman, 48, retail leasing exec
Tina Scheer, 45, logging-sports promoter
Cirie Fields, 35, registered nurse
Melinda Hyder, 32, singer

YOUNGER WOMEN
Courtney Marit, 31, performance artist
Sally Schumann, 27, social worker
Danielle DiLorenzo, 24, medical sales rep
Misty Giles, 24, engineer

Who will be banished to EXILE ISLAND

Oh, to be a cameraman on the Younger Women Tribe...

you know what I want to know, right?

Yay!

I hope the younger male tribe doesn't dominate, because that would be yawn-inducing.

Is 24 the age limit for the show, or is it 18?

Lifelong out-of-reach dream for me.

It's 21. Though Big Brother had a 19 year old one year and Amazing Race just had the family edition.

Anyway, I'm so glad they're back to 16 survivors, I know it sounds petty but 18-20 survivors (which they've had since All-Stars) is just too many people to keep track of and remember. Plus having that many gives us those dreadful, unfair double tribal councils.

Hopefully we're in for a great season for the first time in a long while. I still love the show and watch it religiously but a season hasn't completely absorbed me since Pearl Islands.

Double-checking the website, the youngest was Morgan at 21. There were a bunch of 22 year olds as well.

And sheesh this is Survivor 12! I can't believe we've gone through 11 seasons already.

The older woman seem to be off to a craptacular start by voting off their best member. This seems to happen every year and I already hate that team as a whole. Exile Island part is pretty good too.

With a name like Misty, I wonder if 'Missile Engineer' is some kind of euphemism.

If anyone wants to know at least one person who makes it to the final two... let me know.

Now that Tina has been voted out, the older men's tribe is going to be the most fun to watch: A retired astronaut, a retired fighter pilot, a black belt, and a guy dealing with severe withdrawal (Which I'm surprised has never been a factor on Survivor until now). Either they kick ass in the challenges or they have huge amounts of internal tension when all of their strong personalities clash. It's good TV either way.

Also, I think lying about finding the immunity idol was a dumb idea. I can kind of understand Misty's logic: No one else will be looking for the idol if they think that she found it, giving her a better chance to find it for real. However, that means she will have to throw a challenge or something in order to get back to Exile Island, which will make her look suspicious. Frankly, I think the only reason Probst didn't call Misty's bluff is because it'll be more exciting when one of the other contestants does.

I don't mind Misty's logic... I didn't think of it myself. But she was a little tooooooo open about the whole thing.

Great premiere, this looks like a good season. The bloated number of cast members is finally back down to 16.

The older women are already off to a bad start. The lumber jill was somewhat kooky but still worked much harder than any of the rest of them did, especially the amusingly sassy-but-dead weight Cirie.

Younger men made little-to-no impression so far, although some of them are kind of dreamy (Hello, Nick!) and Aras looks like he could find a "flower child" soul mate in Courtney.

Speaking of Courtney...yeah. Misty seems pretty decent so far; I'm hoping the fact she'a a rocket scientist (apparently) will make her do smart things in the game.

I liked the two Tom-ish older men (the retired astronaut and the fighter pilot), but the Pat Morita clone seemed kind of annoying and that one guy with upcoming withdrawl problems is not going to be a pretty sight.

That's what I thought as well.

It would be crap though if she did convince them that she had it, then no one else would go looking for it.

I think Tina's kooky-ness was probably some kind of defense mechanism to help her cope with her child's death That was actually pretty sad.

I just read that Shane (the 3 packs a day-guy) named his son Boston.

His last name is Powers.

That is the meanest thing I've ever heard.

Shane (aka Tommy Lee wannabe) makes for some pretty annoying TV.

Poor Melinda and Cirie.

Shane must go down, what an ass he is. I don't think Aras meant to be as rude as he was by telling Melinda & Cirie one of them would be going, but it was still a terrible strategic move. I'm hoping Cirie, Bruce, Bobby & Courtney seize power next week and turn things around on that tribe. We were given little insight as to what Bobby is thinking, but he was hanging with Cirie/Melinda more than the others and is not part of the alliance so my guess is his vote was to ingratiate himself with the majority.

I don't have much of an impression of the other tribe yet, but I'm liking the girls more than the guys at this point. They're all semi-decent so far, though I have a feeling Terry is going to be annoying me soon. And Ruth Marie should stop being so invisible, what exactly is her strategy? We see Austin/Nick being courted by Terry/Dan & Misty/Sally but what the hell is she doing?

Btw, I know it's only two episodes but I think this season rocks so far. I have a clear idea of who everybody is and the voteoffs have been tense.

I think Bruce, Bobby and Courtney might realize that they'd be better off without Shane and vote him off. They can always recruit Cirie or that exile island guy to fill his place, since those two basically have nowhere else to go.

Shane is too intense, too much of a loose cannon. I predict he'll be gone before the merge.

I'm liking Cirie, kind of.

I like the Korean dude and the quiet black man, who really hasn't said a word this season it seems.

I'm surprised the previous Exile Island girl didn't come into strategy. Previously, she had alluded to that she had found the idol.

Smoker dude isn't that bad. He's pretty cool so far, except the Boston Powers thing Libs mentioned (maybe a divorce changed his last name or something). It seems he's doing not that bad to have quit smoking so recently.

The fat coniving lard still survives. The nickname will hold until she proves me otherwise.

I was disappointed they went away from the 4 tribe thing... I thought that was an interesting idea, and wanted to see which tribe lasted the longest. However, I was a little disturbed that I would be in the "old guy" tribe if I was on the show.

Anyhow, I can't stand the people on the show that don't want to be there and ask to be voted off after 6 days (Shane). What the hell did he think the show was??? Hadn't he ever considered the quitting smoking or lack of food and water might happen?? It pisses me off when people that don't want to be there stay longer than those that REALLY want to be there. It also is sad when a healthy young guy can't hack it, yet the older heavy set females don't have a problem.

I don't know who I'm rooting for yet... I'd probably lean toward the art teacher Asian guy, the goofy astronaut, or the semi-cute athletic girl that lost that first challenge for the young girls last week.

Idon'tgetit..what'sfunnyormeanaboutBostonPowers?